


Needs

by istia



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s04e11 Orbit, M/M, POV Vila Restal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-05-10
Updated: 2000-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:09:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avon and Vila renegotiate their relationship after the wonderfully angsty events of the fourth series episode <em>Orbit</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needs

**Author's Note:**

> Written in May 2000, when I was in my fannish infancy, and first published in Oct 2004.

The door slid open, letting in a spill of light from the corridor that framed a dark bulk.

"Oh, it's you." Vila couldn't summon anything but limp indifference, letting his eyes drift back to the bottle clasped in his lap. "I must have forgotten to lock the door."

"Perhaps you simply did not intend to keep me out."

"Or maybe I'd given up thinking you'd have the nerve to come. There's a thought for you. Been a while, hasn't it?"

Avon moved forward to allow the door to slide shut behind him. Vila watched obliquely as shadowed eyes probed the room in a single, appraising sweep. A solitary light on low provided a dim, softened ambience, but it would take a less acute observer than his visitor to mistake it for sultry. The dimness was that of a cave, a hideaway, a cocoon. A retreat from normality. An attitude summed up, Vila supposed, in his own rumpled and unprepossessing figure sitting cross-legged on the bunk that the mirror on the far wall reflected with unfeeling verity. His eyes caught disinterestedly on the reflection of the dark gaze that fixed on his own hunched figure as Avon moved a step farther into the room. For a moment, he thought he glimpsed a subtle tension in the interloper, but Avon shifted and the impression was gone. Vila didn't care enough to wonder.

"_You_ seem to have lost the nerve to come out," Avon rasped. "If it isn't an oxymoron to use the words 'nerve' and 'you' in the same breath."

"Oh, that's nice. Hiding, am I? Wondered what I was doing." He moved his shoulders inside the scratchiness of a tunic worn too long without being changed, then turned it into a shrug of dismissal. He lifted the fluted bottle to his mouth.

"The others are becoming concerned about your absence. Whilst undoubtedly only a passing lapse in judgement on their parts, it's becoming an irritatingly urgent theme nonetheless."

He lowered the bottle. "Really? Now, that's touching, that is. I really am touched, deep down. Honest. All het up about it, are they? Tarrant pulling his curls out? Dayna regretting all the things she's said to me? Life in our beloved Xenon Base grounding to a halt out of worry for poor old Vila? I can just see it. Gratifying, that's what it is."

The silence might have been awkward if he had allowed himself to attend to it. As it was, the quiet was simply there, endurable until it went away. Like so very much else in life these days.

"Vila, even you can't hide yourself away for ever. You have duties you're neglecting, for one thing."

"D'you know," he confided, settling his eyes on the dark, broad-shouldered shape standing straight and still as an obelisk in the centre of his room, "I reckon I can do what I want. I mean, I'm not really meant to be here at all, am I? It's a curious thing, when you think about it. What's the status of a dead man who's still alive? It takes a lot of pondering, I'll tell you, to get to the bottom of it."

The cultured voice was harsh now, as though Avon spoke through gritted teeth. "Do you intend to skulk in here indefinitely, guzzling that rot and spouting asinine rubbish?"

He paused in his restless smoothing of the cool, familiar bottle. He half-smiled towards his visitor as a frisson of melancholy skirled across his nerves. With more of an effort than he'd expected, he kept his voice light, even managing to inject a sweetness he knew would aggravate: "Have I ever mentioned how much I admire your wonderful vocabulary, Avon? It's an inspiration to the rest of us, no doubt about it."

Avon took an audible breath; when he spoke, his voice was a paradigm of control. "Vila. You can sulk in here for the rest of your miserable life for all I care, but you can't keep everyone else away. Dayna, for one, is raring to force her way in."

"Probably hoping to find my corpse," he commented to the two fingers of pale green liquid, which sloshed merrily in the bottle's fat belly in response. At least he could always count on one audience who appreciated his view on things. "Very bloodthirsty, our little Dayna. Been ages since she had a thrill like that. And Tarrant would enjoy burying me in space. Lovely chance to spout all that FSA rubbish he learnt. At the least, he'd enjoy shoving me out the airlock. Or--" he looked up, widening his eyes to their fullest "--maybe _you'd_ prefer to do that, Avon?"

"Stop it, Vila."

The restrained violence in Avon's voice barely penetrated his preoccupation.

"Having failed the first time and all." He took another drawn-out swallow of liquid defence.

The silence persisted longer this time. He indulged a prolonged contemplation of the polished black leather boots planted apart on the grey synth-carpet. He'd found the rug rolled up in one of the storage bays whilst poking into all the locked areas early in their sojourn on Xenon Base. He'd appropriated it as thief's right, sneaking it into his room as a plain but somewhat warmer alternative to the metal floors everywhere. After all, he didn't always manage to make it all the way into bed. Much nicer waking up in the morning to discover he'd passed out on a bit of a cushioned surface, scratchy and dull as it was.

He noticed Avon's boots were in their usual immaculate condition. Avon was an amazing man, in some ways. In other ways, of course....

"Not that it was for lack of trying." He smiled at the broad back as Avon whipped around and headed for the door. "Not going already, are you? After it took you so long to come and all." He broke off to grin at the stiffening of the already straight shoulders. "How long's it been, anyway? Since you last...came."

Avon paused. He remained facing the door as he spoke. "You've been in hiding for thirteen days."

"That long? Well. I really didn't think you'd hold out for that long, Avon. See how you keep managing to surprise me, even after all these years."

Avon swung around in a flurry of silver-studded leather and barely leashed violence. "Vila--"

"It's all right, though. You're here now, aren't you? Knew you'd break down sometime. Funny, when you think about it, you breaking before me. Bit of a laugh, that. When you think about it."

A muscle jumped in Avon's jaw as he ground his teeth. "I suppose you know what you're trying to say."

"Oh, I think you know what I'm talking about, Avon."

He left the bed and set the bottle on the table with care before advancing on Avon. He drew on the same languorous control he'd shown while drinking. He wasn't far gone, not yet, not tonight; he wanted that fact to be plain. He moved close to Avon, crowding into the slightly taller and broader man, hustling his body against Avon's.

"Got all those seething underground needs of yours to consider, haven't we? After all, I'm happy with a bottle--or two--of adrenaline and soma. But you're a far more complicated man, aren't you, Kerr Bleeding-Alpha Avon? There's so much more fire in you that a mere sedative can't quench it. It demands something more...immediate," and Vila closed his hand purposefully on the leather-encased groin.

As though freed from a restraint table, Avon's hands flew up and gripped Vila's shoulders in a bruising hold, like claws piercing him. He opened his mouth to squawk, but Avon's hard mouth silenced him, Avon's tongue forcing a more tangible penetration. For a moment, Vila's mouth softened in response, but then he shifted, took Avon's lower lip between his teeth and nipped. Avon reared back. Vila stood his ground, wiping the back of his hand across his lips.

"Want your needs seen to again, Avon? Knew you'd come, didn't I? Oh, yes, I knew you'd come. Knew you wouldn't be able to stay away. No one else here, is there? No one else who'll have you. Or should I say, put up with you--"

The slap wasn't hard, but it made him stagger, just a little, unexpected as it was. He fetched up against the table. He snatched up the bottle and retreated to the bed. He huddled against the wall, not drinking, feeding instead on his anger and a cold well of despair that had become familiar over the past long days.

"Don't try to pretend that it was all one-sided, Vila." Avon's voice was the icy, cutting one that indicated rage. "You are far more engrossed in sensuality than I am."

"What would you do if I were dead?" He breathed the words, not expecting an answer. He wasn't sure Avon would even hear him.

"I realise that it is a difficult concept to grasp, but you are not dead. Stop acting like a walking corpse and admit the truth: you want this as much as I do. You always did and you always will." Avon's voice, implacable and cold as his words, struck Vila with misery.

"I could have been dead. If you'd had your way. Then what'd you do, eh? Try it on with Tarrant?" The thought sparked a surge of primitive delight. "I could just see it--"

"If you were dead, you wouldn't see anything, fool. You are not dead. Start acting like you're alive."

"Alive when you want me to be, you mean." He tumbled headlong from elation back into desolation. He noticed a slight trembling of the green liquid, realising only after a moment it was from his hand. He studied this curious phenomenon with detached interest as he spoke. "You only lasted thirteen days. Not much, is it? Considering the pickle you'd have been in if things had happened as you'd planned. I could have held out a lot longer than you. Must be a come down, realising that. Doesn't it bother you?"

"What galls me is your refusal to grow up and use the half a brain you were born with. We are both alive. The past is done, the present is perilous enough, and we undoubtedly won't have much peace before Tarrant gets his next precipitous urge to fling us all off on some new quest. If you want to waste the privacy while it is here and we're both ready--"

"You're the one who flings us off on quests, though. The merest whisper about Blake having been seen and we're off across the galaxies--"

"Blake is dead. You are alive."

Another silence ensued, this one fraught with emotion that was unspoken but tangible. Vila breathed it in, sipping at first, then gulping mouthfuls. The taste of Avon's emotion, rarely displayed, habitually covered in layers of cold: inaccessible, remote. The taste of Avon's needs, Avon's demands, Avon's wants, Avon's wanting him, Avon needing, needy. Avon weak with it; that's what he had long ago discovered. That Avon had a weakness: a need for closeness he channelled into sex. The black-ice prince was a passionate man under his controlled exterior. And there was no one in his limited circle of uneasy companions to whom he could turn for the satisfaction of that need...except Vila.

Possibly Blake, once, before Blake was lost; he suspected so, but was sure he'd never know. Not that it mattered. He wasn't jealous of whatever part of Avon Blake had had, not even if Blake had had all of Avon, much more than the slice of himself Avon allowed Vila. He couldn't envy a dead man--dead or lost; same thing. Anyway, he'd liked Blake. He'd liked him enough not to begrudge him his time with Avon.

Sometimes, he even managed not to begrudge Blake his time with Avon as he was before the madness seeded its tendrils into the darkly complex soul.

He'd liked Cally, too, and he missed her even more than he did Blake. Liked her enough not to begrudge her having had what Vila knew he'd never garner: Avon's love. At least, she'd had whatever love Avon had retained after wrestling with and screwing Blake and bearing the torment that had accompanied that relationship. Cally had had the platonic, compassionate love, whatever there was of that emotion in Avon. Perhaps Avon's capacity to feel that kind of tenderness had died with her. Or perhaps the explosion that destroyed her had transmuted that feeling into the stark unreason inexorably taking Avon over.

And what did Vila have? He had what was left, what was on offer: Avon's need. And Vila's own need in return.

"So, I'm alive." Lo and behold, his voice didn't wobble. He met Avon's hooded eyes and cursed, now, the poor light as he was unable to read anything in their shielded depths. "What's it got to do with you?"

"I saved your life on the shuttle, Vila. You are alive only because of me."

"You tried to kill me!"

In a flash of movement, Avon was on him, knee pressing into the mattress and his leather-bulked body looming overhead. Avon stroked Vila's hair in a parody of a caress before gripping it and yanking his head back. Vila's breath shortened. The fury riding the brown depths of Avon's eyes was all too clear now.

"How long are you going to go on about it? It didn't happen; you're alive. I saved your paltry, contemptible life."

"It's just that when someone tries to shove me out an airlock, the matter tends to linger in my mind." He projected all the earnestness he could muster in an attempt to hold off the force he'd unleashed. "I can't help it. It's my mind, you see; it just works like that. It thinks nearly being killed is a big deal for some reason. Can't imagine why, no one else does, but it does just find it hard to accept it wouldn't have mattered a toss if you'd managed to find me and shove me out into space. My mind won't accept it. Got a mind of its own, so to speak. Not like yours, all computer parts, all regular and logical. My mind's human. It thinks it's important, even thinks it's got some value. Maybe even as much value as you have--speaking from its point of view."

"And from your point of view?" Avon's voice was soft, almost gentle; Vila squirmed with unease against the implacable grip. "Consider your life as important as mine, do you?"

"Well. Yes?" He would have flinched at the squeak in his voice if Avon hadn't had him pinned with hardly room enough to breathe.

Avon's left hand lifted from his shoulder, the fingers relaxing from talons into delicate manoeuvrable digits. The forefinger stroked down Vila's cheek in a meandering path from the outer corner of his eye to his mouth before settling on the centre of his lips, a small pad of warmth against his sensitive flesh. Avon's head tilted as he stared into Vila's wide eyes.

"Which means in turn that my life is as important as yours. Yes?"

"Well. Um."

"It's a simple equation, Vila," Avon purred.

The finger resting against his mouth shifted. Avon stroked the back of his hand up Vila's cheek, branding him with a pseudo-tenderness that threatened his shaky defences. Avon's vivid presence, never more charged than when he was either fighting for his life or sexually alight, was working its transmutation on him, sapping his strength and all his resolve.

"If you consider your life to be as important--or almost--as mine, then you presumably also consider my life to be as important as yours. A basic example of equilateral thinking. Even your pathetic excuse for a brain ought to be able to work that one out. Isn't that right? Vila?"

Awash in the confusion Avon's soft touch and softer voice engendered, he had time only to give a cautious nod before the fingers lifted from his face and attached themselves to his throat in a lethal hold.

Avon's voice was a vicious whiplash: "Then why did _you_ try to kill _me_?"

Feeling his senses going grey, Vila kicked out with a dome-urchin's instinctive accuracy. He scrambled to the head of the bunk as Avon cursed and let go of him to clutch his groin.

"You had the gun! You tried to get rid of me! It was nothing I did--I wouldn't have tried to throw you into space!"

Avon rounded on him, his face flushed and contorted with rage no longer remotely tamped down. "You knew when you were hiding that if we didn't lighten the weight in the shuttle, it would burn up and kill us both. You hid, knowing we had only minutes left to live. How did it feel, Vila? Did you feel exultant knowing you were going to take me with you? That you were going to kill _me_?"

"Oh, I see." He pressed himself into the bunk's angled corner wall. "It was all my fault. I should have known. Expect I should have walked straight out the airlock myself, sacrificed myself to save you. Bad form not to do that, to force you to go through that nasty business of stalking me with a gun. Isn't that right, Avon? I should have sacrificed myself for you?"

"No, you fool, you shouldn't. But having done your best to kill me along with your own useless self, you shouldn't sit there preaching at me for having tried to do the same thing. Holier than thou really doesn't suit you. You're far too corrupt to pull off injured innocence."

"I wouldn't have shoved you out the airlock!" A spark of defiance flamed like the Devil in him: "And neither would Blake have."

"Spare me your inane hero-worship for Blake and his nauseating moral code. He's dead because of it; or locked up somewhere. Whereas you and I are still alive--because I saved us. Again. Left up to you, we'd both be dead now."

He tried to relax his fingers from their death grip on the neck of the bottle as he rubbed his other hand over the wet patch on his belly where some of the liquid had spilt. He pulled his knees up, an insubstantial but comforting wall between himself and Avon.

"I still won't forget what happened--"

"Neither will I."

The clipped, implacable words hung in the air. Vila looked into Avon's eyes. He tried not to see it in the dark depths, but he couldn't help himself. It was there. Not remorse; never that. No apology, either. But beyond the anger, deeper even than the loneliness, there was the need. Avon's need for him, Vila. Avon's need: his greatest weakness. The raw, bleak knot of need deep in Avon that he would never have shown Cally, cocooned as she'd been in Avon's respect and caring. The need he was unlikely to reveal to any of their present companions, the trio of youngsters who, for all their toughness, had never known prison and the ultimate vulnerability of defeat.

Avon's need was for Vila alone to know. To use, or just to have: whichever Vila chose.

He forced a smile and relaxed his legs into a cross-legged position that displayed his crotch. Not much to display at the moment--fear wasn't his aphrodisiac--but the stirring was there now. Not that Avon had ever had any particular concern with Vila's desires or even his physical attributes, other than that he was human, warm, willing, and broachable. But all that, he sensed, nostrils flaring like a hound scenting the air for blood, could change.

His smile blossomed as Avon's eyes narrowed.

"So, here we are." He summoned a bright voice and flourished the depleted bottle. "Fancy a drink? Or is it to be right-down-to-it-and-shut-up-Vila?"

Avon's tense shoulders relaxed a fraction and he gave a small, betraying shift, easing back from him. "That easy? Am I all forgiven now?"

The sarcasm bit, but he was nothing if not used to Avon's tongue. What mattered wasn't what Avon said, but what he did. That he was here spoke loudest; that he'd come himself rather than letting one of the others check on Vila--if indeed any of them were actually worried about him at all. Avon was capable of making up much more elaborate stories than that to serve his purpose. Either way, Avon was here because he'd chosen to come.

Or, just possibly, he was here because he hadn't had a choice at all.

Vila slid off the bed, making sure he brushed against Avon as he moved to a cupboard to get a pair of glasses. He set them on the table and poured a generous measure in each. Taking one in each hand, he extended the left towards Avon, who was still standing guardedly self-contained beside the wide bunk.

"Well, according to you, there's nothing to forgive, is there? You tried to kill me and failed, I tried to kill you and failed. We're both failures together. We seem to be even. Right?"

He beamed as Avon took the glass, allowing Vila to diddle his fingers in the exchange. Avon's sardonic look revealed his awareness of the game Vila was playing. Or that Avon thought he knew, anyroad.

Avon's voice was as sardonic as his look. "Ignoring--as you seem prone to do--the apparently inconsequential matter of my having succeeded in saving your life as well as my own, we might consider ourselves even. We might, that is, if one of us were feeling self-delusional and the other chose to humour him."

"Oh, I'm not humouring you, Avon." He bestowed on his companion a look of wide-eyed gravity. "Really. I might not be able to forget what happened, but it's no reason to end everything between us, is it? No gain for either of us in that."

"Ahhh." Avon quirked his lips, then seemed to settle on amusement as the best response rather than a foredoomed attempt at enlightenment. His mouth loosened into a wolfish half-smile. "Well, then, that's all right."

Avon reached for him. He let Avon pull him close to his armoured chest and sank into the kiss that followed, feeding on the passion that opened to him. He rubbed his thigh against the burgeoning hardness at Avon's groin and pressed his own erection against Avon's sharp hipbone, revelling in the mingled pain and pleasure. As he pushed up the studded leather tunic, he caught a whiff of sweat, pungent and intoxicating. He touched bare skin with a shiver of anticipation, skimming his hands over Avon's warm chest, hungrier for the sensations than he could admit even to himself. The sense of betrayal that had kept him isolated for almost a fortnight, festering in him, leading him towards fear and independence and resolution, faded before the drug of clasping Avon's steel and brilliance in his arms.

Vila's to have, to hold, even through betrayal, wherever the madness might lead them.

Tugs on his tunic alerted him to Avon's undressing him. He turned his focus to undressing Avon in turn. Thirteen days was all it had been. A mere thirteen days apart. He'd spent years alone, without touch, without even personal companionship after Gan had died. Not that they'd been lovers. Gan would have been shocked at the thought. But Gan had been a mate; Vila's mate. He'd felt closer to Gan than to anyone else despite his affection for Cally and trust in Blake and lusting after Avon. There'd only been Gan for him, then there hadn't been even Gan.

He'd survived Gan's loss all right, though. Alone in the group, he'd managed to get through all the following crises and the subsequent losses of Blake, then Jenna. And then Avon had been adrift with only the crew one fate and another had foisted on him anchoring him, against his will. Avon adrift in need and Vila there to hold him steady, the only one left who was capable of recognising Avon's drives and passions, the one who was willing to take them into himself. Not the strongest anchor, perhaps, just one amongst the others; yet unique in his way.

Avon had chosen to ignore the fact he'd endured only thirteen days apart. To Vila, it was a song of victory to set beside the dirge of betrayal to try to make of them a balance. In this one thing, he was stronger than Avon. He knew he could survive loneliness. In this one thing, he held the power.

Avon took them to the bed, both naked and already sweating, their hearts pumping. Avon pressed him down. He followed the lead, but kept hold of Avon's arm and hip, not letting Avon escape his grip. Avon lay on his side beside him and half-covered him. One strong, slender leg pushed between Vila's, which he gladly parted. From a mix of instinct and habit, they moved together in a panting, impassioned movement, each as aware of the other's place and role and body and response as he was of his own.

They had danced this reel together countless times before. Nights of seeking, of loosened restraints, of caged passions let free to soar. Their time of mutual exploration was past; so, too, was the time of colonisation, the setting of seeds and foundations. They'd been well into their time of settled prosperity, of reaping and consolidation, when a fatal shuttle trip had salted their ground with betrayal. Now it remained to them to make what they would in the aftermath of crisis. A time of reconciliation lay possibly at hand.

Or, perhaps, it would be a time of revolution.

The dance proceeded according to one of their recognised patterns. Not that they'd ever explored many variations. Avon might be a man of driving needs, but the great Alpha rebel was no rebel in bed. Vila smiled at the hard grip holding him. No rebel, but never anything other than Alpha. Demanding hands, a sucking mouth, a thrusting, powerful body, and himself accepting, giving, taking, easing. It wouldn't take long this first time. Avon was too lost in his body's demands to prolong matters. How galling must it be, Vila mused, closing his eyes and tangling his hands in soft hair as lips engulfed his left nipple, for such a thinky man to know himself hostage to his body?

Vila knew all about the body's demands. Regular communion with Dorian's well-stocked (though now rather depleted) wine stores and raids on the adrenaline and soma that Cally--sweet, dear Cally--had insisted to the last were for medicinal purposes hadn't blunted his recognition of what he was doing, and why. He'd never drunk this much when Blake was with them. Not as much before Terminal, for that matter, where they'd lost Cally and _Liberator_ and another illusion of Blake's being alive and coming back to them; and lost all hope, perhaps. His hands softened to caresses as Avon, single-mindedly focused on his own needs as always, slicked his cock with lubricant one-handed. Then, tossing the tube onto the cabinet beside the bed, he slid his cool, slippery fingers behind Vila's testes in the next practiced step in the dance.

Through the sensations building in him, he clung to the thought of how Terminal had destroyed hope for them and simultaneously put the killing darkness into Avon's tortured soul. He drank not to escape, but to endure. And what he had most to endure was the knowledge of his yearning need for Avon. A need that went beyond his body's desires and which he was certain nothing would ever fulfill.

He arched at the familiar ache as Avon's fingers slid into him and scissored, though gently. Avon was a chivalrous lover, a surprise considering his engrained impatience for anything that impeded his will and for Vila himself outside of bed. Here, though, in the dim-lit privacy of a utilitarian room, Avon sought the satisfaction of his physical demands with a focused purpose that yet included a kind of tender concern.

Vila's breath caught at the thought of Avon's bravery in his being able to expose this weakness to anyone at all. He closed his arms in a fierce embrace that made Avon grunt, distracting him momentarily from their accustomed and expected course. By now, Vila knew he should be moaning, as lost to the needs swamping his body as Avon was and acquiescent to Avon's soft but imperative control.

And Vila did almost lose himself in the sensations as Avon readied both of them for the dance's final movement. He felt the pity of it, that Avon could still reveal this tenderness to another person even after Anna Grant's betrayal, even after Blake's loss, or departure, or whatever it was Blake had done, dying or worse. He felt the ache inside himself--an ache even more compelling than his own, or even Avon's, clamouring bodily needs--at what Avon had tried to do on Egrorian's shuttle, at Avon's betrayal. Avon would have survived if he'd succeeded in throwing Vila out the airlock, oh yes. But the act would also have left Avon even more alone, even more driven to embrace the cold inner darkness that was as killing as the vacuum of space. Vila wavered, hurting, wanting to take into himself as much of Avon's cold as he could and warm him and make him well.

As though doused in chill water, he blinked back to reality. The dream of mending Avon, like a faulty computer, fled back to its place amongst the other illusions that hazed their lives. It nestled there alongside the illusion of recovering Blake, or of actually defeating the Federation, or of any of them surviving more than a few scant months or a year or two, if they were lucky. The shuttle trip that had failed to kill him had made illusions of even his hope and trust, which had withered in the acid blast of Avon's determined self-preservation.

There would be no mending Avon. Not by Vila. If anything remained to them, it lay only in moving on and making anew their oddly tender pact.

Avon was urging him onto his stomach now, beguiling hands lifting and turning him. He wanted with unnerving desperation to do just that, to roll over for Avon. He wanted to own Avon, to have him, to possess him the only way he could, but he resisted. Avon had almost killed him. Avon had almost deprived Vila of life and, in the process, stranded himself in isolation. Avon had betrayed his right to this dance and to Vila's warmth and Vila's hopes. Now Avon, if he wanted the reel to continue, would have to learn a new pattern.

He rolled onto his side instead of his belly and looked at Avon. Flushed and aroused and focused, he was the image of virility. Vila appreciated the dark-flushed organ thrusting up, fluid seeping from the head with its flared cap, python-like. He touched a finger to the throbbing vein on its underside and smiled.

"Impatient, aren't you, friend? Just like the rest of him."

He met Avon's burning eyes. His smile wavered. He gathered the shreds of his courage and spoke at light-speed: "See, it's like this. I don't fancy doing it that way right now. Know you like it like that; I like it, too, most of the time. Just not all the time. See what I mean? I think it's time we, well, explored other ways. What do you think?"

Avon took a deep breath, then spoke in a voice that was low and cutting, but controlled. "I think you're mad if you think I'm going to let you use me."

"See, now, that's what I mean. Sort of. I mean, it's typical, isn't it, that you'd think of it as 'using'. That it's okay for you to 'use' me, but not okay for me to 'use' you. If you see what I mean. Maybe I don't see it as 'using'. That would make it different. Wouldn't it? I mean, when you consider we'd agreed that your life and mine are equally valuable, and since we both equally failed when we tried to kill each other, that makes us sort of equal." Avon's intensifying scowl made him rush on before he could be stopped. "All I'm saying is, if we're going to be together, we should be more equal about it. About what I might want, once in a while."

Avon pushed him away and stood. Avon's body quivered, the shiny-slick cock an accusatory pointer, but his will maintained its mastery over his flesh.

"Are you seriously trying to coerce me into doing what you want, Vila? You really must be mad if you think that your charms--" the sneering, cataloguing gaze made him want to cover himself up "--are sufficient inducement to lead me to satisfy your paltry whims."

"Well, takes one to know one," he muttered.

As Avon turned away with a noise of disgust, Vila catapulted off the bed. He put a hand on Avon's bare back as he bent over the chair for his clothes. He enjoyed the satisfaction of feeling Avon tense.

"Shouldn't just rush away, Avon. No point to that, is there? Who else are you going to go to, eh?" He blocked out all thought of Soolin, unable to bear the image of Avon's darkness wrapped in her sunlight beauty. "I know you. Know what you like. I like it, too. It's just that things have changed now; you must see that."

He lifted a hand and brushed at a lock of Avon's dishevelled hair, feeling a coil of betraying tenderness even as Avon pulled back from his touch with his mouth curling into a sneer.

"I was happy the way we were, Avon." He stared at the marble face. "For what it was, which wasn't much, but was something. Something good, in its way. Something for both of us. That's why you came tonight, isn't it? Because it was good. In its way."

Avon looked at him, lofty and remote. How could he ever have touched this man? How could he ever expect Avon to allow Vila to touch him again? His sadness drained away, making place for a wash of anger at Avon's determined, killing aloneness. Avon's way would entail hurting them both rather than admitting to a need or relinquishing his control of the situation.

"And it'll be good again. But it has to be different now, don't you see? Not better, maybe, but different. Because things are...different." He stumbled to a halt, unable to say anything else, aware of a chill as sweat dried on his bare skin, while a chill of emptiness iced his guts.

Avon stood still and silent for what seemed like a long time. Vila shivered but wouldn't give way. It would be too easy to accept Avon exactly as he was and do what Avon wanted and be what Avon demanded, just so he wouldn't lose what little he had of Avon. That little was too little, though, and would become less if he let Avon go on controlling their private lives. Avon needed him; it was time Avon stopped avoiding the idea.

He stroked Avon's chest, skimming over the damp hair and the taut nipples, dipping down to stroke the flat, quivering belly. Avon made no move to leave or push him away. Feeling more confident, he pressed against Avon's side and closed his hand over Avon's cock. He placed a kiss on Avon's collarbone, another on his throat, a third on his set jaw line. He moved his other hand down Avon's back, mapping the man's tension in bunched muscles, and cupped a buttock in a purposeful hand. He allowed his fingers to quest into the cleft.

And still Avon stayed.

"It'll be good, I swear," he whispered into Avon's ear. He kissed the sensitive whorls before moving his lips to Avon's smooth cheek and down towards his mouth. "All you have to do is trust me, Avon."

He kissed Avon, tonguing the set mouth open with only minimal resistance at the same moment he touched the dry anus. He ran a single finger around the tiny circle, keeping his touch light enough not to be intrusive yet making his intention clear. Rubbing his own aching need against Avon's hip, Vila lifted his mouth and looked into Avon's flushed face, recognising with a rush of unease the calculating look on the sculpted features.

Avon moved at last, taking hold of his arms and pushing him gently out of touch with Avon's body.

"So, that's the retribution you've decided on, is it?"

"Eh?"

"A bit dicey. I could easily walk out of here and leave you with nothing."

"Could you? I don't think you can, see. I don't think you'd've ever walked into my room--well, cabin it was then, on the _Liberator_\--in the first place if you'd had any better option. And pickings are even worse now," he rushed on, glossing again over the possibility of Soolin with practiced ease at avoiding the unpleasant, "which is why you're here at all. Isn't it?"

Avon smiled a predatory cheer and touched a hand to Vila's shivery belly. "Well," he said, with a smooth dark amusement, "I'm certainly not here to listen to you prattle; I get more than enough of that outside this room. So, we'll get on with it, shall we? You can have your petty vengeance, then things will get back to normal."

"Not quite, though," he reminded Avon, clinging to his determined course as Avon led him back to the bed and laid him down and lay beside him, all charged and bristling with sexual intensity. "I mean, this isn't a one-time thing or anything." He paused, watching the saturnine face lowering towards him. "It isn't, is it, Avon?" He couldn't quite keep the desperation from his voice.

"Well, now, that depends on you, doesn't it, Vila?"

"Does it?" he said, brightening.

"On how skilfully you manage to overwhelm me with your manifest sensual accomplishments."

"Oh. Er, right."

"You'll need this."

He looked at the greasy tube Avon pressed into his hand, then watched with stupefaction the grace with which Avon turned onto his stomach and presented his arse. Avon slid his long legs apart and drew his right knee up, opening himself to Vila's gaze. Vila swallowed at glimpsing for the first time what Avon had always kept from him. He went to his knees, eager and gentle at once. He smoothed gel on his wilted erection as he stared at Avon's buttocks, unable to pull his eyes away from the pale globes. The promise of forbidden fruit acted like a drug in his veins, making his cock surge to readiness.

Fingers first, allowed to touch, to soothe cool slickness around the tight muscle, to coax an entrance. He lay down to dot kisses up the length of Avon's back, brushing aside the dark hair to lip his milk-white nape. Avon relaxed under his ministrations and drew his knee up higher to let Vila's finger slide inside him. A thrill shivered down Vila to his core. He was afraid he wouldn't last long enough, but he wanted to make it perfect.

"It'll be good, I promise." His voice was husky as he pressed himself against Avon. "I won't hurt you, not much, anyway. A little at first, but--"

"Vila," Avon's lazily amused voice interrupted him. "Do you seriously believe that you are about to deflower a virgin?"

He floundered into muteness, shocked and not sure why.

Avon had lifted his head and was looking at him with a sardonic arrogance that made him feel like a grubby juvenile.

"Really." Avon smiled as though at a private joke. He settled back down, closing his eyes.

Abashed, Vila retreated to his sanctioned exploration of the body given into his power, however briefly. Maybe it was true. Blake, perhaps? But it might not be true at all. It might just be Avon's pride, which always demanded he appear superior to everyone else. Not that it mattered. He was determined to make it good for Avon, no matter what. It was only good for him if he made it good for his partner; he had his pride, too, and lovemaking was near the top of his list of self-proclaimed skills. He needed this connection with Avon, needed to make Avon, for once, aware of him as a specific person, not just a body to use. He wanted Avon to remember and to add the memory to that store of needs binding them together.

He caressed Avon's still form with his left hand and his mouth as his other hand probed into Avon's privacy, taking it from the other man with careful, caring desire. Even if Avon never allowed them anything but using each other, it didn't have to feel like servicing. Avon had never made him feel used, not with his body. Only Avon's words could do that.

He licked over a smooth buttock to tongue the tiny, puckered hole. He felt Avon's first involuntary quivery and heard a smothered gasp. He closed his eyes in exultation. He continued to probe and caress, taking his time and doing the job right. Key to a successful lock-pick, that was: You couldn't rush at the most challenging and complicated locks and expect to bludgeon your way through. A delicate touch was what was required; and knowledge.

By the time he mounted Avon, he had urged the heavier man onto his knees and closed a hand around Avon's weeping, pulsing erection, as hard as he'd ever felt it. Avon was panting, though still stubbornly silent. Vila took him with the pent-up anger and betrayal still simmering inside himself, but with all the unspoken love, too, all the softness and wanting and cherishing Avon despised in him, so Vila never dared show it. He had only tried to show it before in his welcoming of Avon's demands, his acquiescence to Avon's needs. Now, he lavished it on Avon, the heat of it melting the ice of Vila's lingering anguish and letting him fill Avon not just with his seed, but with the overwhelming flood of desire and good will and caring that made him cry out Avon's name.

Dimly but triumphantly, he was aware of his own name being gasped in quiet counterpoint, framed though it was in curses.

Avon said nothing in the aftermath as Vila lay panting half atop him. He made no sound as Vila separated them, none when Vila cleaned him with a dampened cloth. Vila didn't mind the silence, absorbed in wondering if Avon had felt this same surge of possessiveness each time he'd cleaned Vila after this act. Had Avon felt anything comparable to this luxurious sweetness he felt? Or was it nothing more to Avon than a clinical routine necessary to ensure the continued health of the body available for his use?

Avon had called his name at the end, though. He hugged the thought to himself. He'd been half-afraid that, if Avon broke his silence at all, he might call for Blake. But, then, he'd been more than half-afraid he'd hear that name every time he'd lain with Avon. Being inside him instead of the other way around wasn't going to banish that basic fear. That fear was just one amongst the many, though, so what did it matter?

He covered them both. Avon lay with his eyes shut, probably half-asleep already. He wasn't bad at foreplay, but he was lousy in the aftermath. Still, a bit of a kip was just the thing to recharge their energy cells. Avon sometimes left him afterwards; those were the worst nights. But, more often than not, he didn't leave. Tonight he appeared not to be going anywhere.

A shred of undissipated tension keeping him cautious, he huddled nevertheless as close against Avon's lax body as he could get. "It was good, wasn't it?" He kept his voice to a whisper, not sure if he hoped Avon would hear or that he wouldn't.

"Go to sleep, Vila."

"But, I mean," he persisted, unable to stop himself from being annoying even after all these years, even knowing all too well the potential consequence, "it wasn't bad, was it? I mean, for a first time. Next time--"

An arm draped across him, pulling his face in against a warm, sweated shoulder, muffling him.

"I mean," he attempted, turning his face so his breath stirred the hair at the base of Avon's throat, a small sea of responsiveness in the room's echoing quiet, "it couldn't have been all bad, or you'd have thumped me by now. We can go on now, can't we, Avon? Things can be different. Doesn't have to be just...using. Does it?"

He fell silent, aware of the elusive nature of the closeness he craved. Avon wouldn't change; couldn't, probably. If they were on Egrorian's shuttle again, he knew nothing would proceed differently. Avon would turn again into the stalking, detached killer if it were a choice between his life and Vila's. The madness would grow, too, as inevitable as the spread of mould on bread. Avon would kill him, one day, or get him killed, or betray him again. Was there any point in his staying? Avon wouldn't even accept the hope of change he tried to offer. Avon certainly wouldn't trust him outside this bed, even if he agreed to trust him in it again.

Avon might not even allow him the barest he'd hoped for: that their private relationship, such as it was, could proceed as more of an equal partnership. He must be as mad as Avon even to think such a thing! So there seemed little point to staying, perpetually at risk and afraid, without even a hope he might be able to influence Avon to move in some less fatal direction.

He rubbed his cheek against Avon's shoulder, accepting that the only place of safety he'd ever known would never be safe again. They could no more return to the time before Egrorian's shuttle than they could restore the world to what it was before Terminal or before Blake's loss or Jenna's and Gan's. He forced himself to accept, too, that it might be time to leave, difficult though he found even the idea. He spared a thought for Kerril, whom he'd left to return to Avon--fool that he was. _Vila the fool_. Just like everyone said.

The arm draped across him tightened, stilling his restlessness. Avon disliked his post-coital sleep to be disturbed. Lips feathered a touch on his forehead.

"Vila, everything will be all right." Avon's voice was deep and calming in the dark.

"Will it?" He was desperate to believe, with the hope he'd tried to show Avon flaring painfully inside himself instead.

"Vila." Avon drew him closer against his warm, pliant body. "It wasn't bad."

"Really?" He couldn't help the glow that began in his belly and spread through him like wildfire. He was just that kind of fellow; a naturally optimistic fellow. Anyway, he knew his Avon. Oh, yeah. It had made a difference, standing up to him, showing him it was okay to trust Vila; or, at least, it might make a difference. Maybe. With time. If he didn't give up on Avon, just abandon him the way Blake had....

"No, it wasn't bad at all."

As Vila sighed and let himself be soothed towards sleep, the mingled misery and see-sawing emotions of the last few days and hours overpowering him at last, he heard the wry voice murmur, "For an imbecilic moron," and he fell asleep with his mouth turned up in a smile.


End file.
